


Weird Is Part of the Job

by ShayneyL



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s02e21 Deadlock, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 00:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20331343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShayneyL/pseuds/ShayneyL
Summary: The newVoyageris supposed to be identical to the one he left...but people sure are acting weird here.Tagged "Major Character Death" because of Harry's canonical death in "Deadlock."





	Weird Is Part of the Job

**Author's Note:**

> Writer's Month 2019, Day 20. The prompt is "weird."

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ: *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

Harry cuddled the baby he'd brought across the rift three days earlier, gently touching her horns. She was awfully cute. 

"Thank you, Harry," Sam said. She was sitting up on her biobed. The Doctor had promised to release her soon. "You don't know what it means to me. She's all I have left of Greskrendtregk."

"You're welcome," Harry said, not knowing what else to say. He didn't have any children yet, and couldn't possibly know what it was like, to lose a baby, then get her back again.

The sickbay doors slid open, and B'Elanna entered. "Can I hold her?" she asked.

Harry cast a glance at Sam, who nodded. "Sure," he said, carefully putting the baby into B'Elanna's arms. He smiled at the sight. Somehow, he'd never imagined B'Elanna as the type to insist on holding a baby.

Apparently, she wasn't. She immediately handed Naomi to Sam, then hauled off and punched Harry in the jaw, knocking him off his feet to the floor. Dazed, he looked up at her.

She leaned down, a scowl on her face. "P'taq! Next time I give you an order, obey it!" Then she turned and stormed out of sickbay. 

* * *

"She hit me," Harry said, lying on a biobed. Kes and the Doctor were busy with Sam and her baby, and it was his friend Tom who was wielding the regenerator over his throbbing jaw. "I don't understand why."

"I do," Tom said. His tone was unusually short. If Harry didn't know better, he'd think Tom was as mad at him as B'Elanna. 

"Are you going to hit me, too?" Harry asked. If he was, might as well do it now and save the regenerating for later.

"No," Tom said. "But I understand why B'Elanna did."

"Why?" Harry asked, exasperated. He was starting to think this really was an alternate universe, very different from his own.

"Harry...you died."

"I know. That's why Captain Janeway...the other Captain Janeway...sent me across the rift."

"You died because you disobeyed B'Elanna's order. She told you to get out, the breach was widening, but you refused. You thought you could finish the repair in time. You were wrong. There was a catastrophic blowout. She tried to hold you, but couldn't maintain her grip. She watched you slip from her grasp and die, Harry."

Harry blinked, shocked. He hadn't really thought about how his friends would be affected by his counterpart's death. And he hadn't realized B'Elanna had had to watch it happen. But...it hardly seemed fair to punch him in the face for something he hadn't done.

"That's terrible," Harry said. "But I didn't do that."

"Yes, you did," Tom said. "Or you _would_ have, because you're the same person. Trying to be the hero, instead of obeying orders."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but couldn't think of anything to say. If the two _Voyagers_ were the same, he and the other Harry were the same. And the other Harry died in front of B'Elanna's eyes because he disobeyed her order.

* * *

Harry sat alone in the mess hall. It was late, and no one else was there. Even Neelix and Kes had finished cleaning up the galley and gone to their quarters. 

Tuvok had asked him if he wanted to press charges against B'Elanna. He'd said no, of course. He understood why she was upset. And even if he didn't, she was his friend, and he wouldn't press charges against her no matter what she did.

Or at least, she used to be his friend. She wasn't speaking to him at the moment. Tom wasn't speaking much. It was enough to make him wish he was back on "his" _Voyager_. Except that that _Voyager_ was destroyed with all hands, and if it hadn't been, he and all his friends would be dead anyway, their organs harvested by the Vidiins. 

He wondered why the other Harry hadn't listened to B'Elanna. Just the natural tendency all people had to believe they had more control, more competence, than they actually had? Inability to truly believe that death would one day happen to him?

He should have obeyed B'Elanna. But if he had...would his Captain Janeway have sent him across the rift? More likely he and the baby would have died with their crewmates. This ship wasn't big enough for two identical Harry Kims, and Naomi couldn't walk through the rift herself.

"Weird is part of the job," the captain had said. It was all getting a little too weird for Harry. 

The mess hall doors slid open. "There you are," a voice said. It was B'Elanna. With Tom.

Harry gulped, wondering if he was about to get clobbered again. He glanced toward the other door, wondering if it would be too cowardly if he just ran for it. 

"Calm down, Harry," Tom said. "We just want to talk." He and B'Elanna crossed the room and sat down at Harry's table. 

"I'm sorry," B'Elanna said. "And thanks for not pressing charges."

Harry nodded at her, not sure what else to say.

"Look, Harry," Tom said. "We were upset because you're our friend, and we lost you. It may be unfair to blame you, but..."

"No," Harry conceded. "It was me. If I did what you said I did, it was me."

"Just...don't do it again?" Tom asked. "I don't think I can take it if you die again."

"I'll do my best," Harry said. He couldn't promise not to die again. No one could promise that.

"Good," Tom said, smiling at him. B'Elanna was smiling, too.

"How about some ice cream to celebrate your triumphant return from the dead?" she suggested. "My treat."

"Easy to eat if your jaw is still sore," Tom added, prompting B'Elanna to kick him in the shin. 

Yes, it was definitely the same _Voyager_.


End file.
